Democratic legislators from the Lawrence area said Saturday that Republican Gov. Sam Brownback and big businesses in Kansas came out winners in the 2015 legislative session. But they said poor and middle class Kansans will end up paying more because of the tax and budget policies that were passed.

Democratic legislators from the Lawrence area discuss the 2015 legislative session with the Douglas County Democratic Party on Saturday at the Lawrence Arts Center.

“The entire session was dominated by what these Koch-funded groups like the Kansas Policy Institute, the Kansas Chamber, KLEAR (Kansas Legislative Education and Research, a conservative caucus group) and Americans for Prosperity wanted,” Rep. John Wilson said. “And that’s why they fist-bumped at the end of the session, because they pretty much got everything they wanted.”

The legislators spoke Saturday to about 50 people who gathered at a Douglas County Democratic Party event at the Lawrence Arts Center, 940 New Hampshire St. Party officials had billed the event as a discussion about the “Kansas Legislature fiasco.”

The session, which lasted a record-breaking 113 days, ended June 12 after lawmakers approved a $384 million tax package that was needed to close the state’s projected $400 million budget gap.

That tax package included raising the state sales tax, including the tax on food, to 6.5 percent; raising cigarette taxes by 50 cents a pack; repealing or reducing most itemized deductions; and delaying for two years further income tax cuts that were scheduled to take effect Jan. 1.

Even with that, the budget and tax package still requires Brownback to make about $50 million in further spending cuts in order to leave the state with a positive balance in its bank account at the end of the next fiscal year.

However, mainly because of a Brownback veto threat, it did not reimpose income taxes on more than 330,000 business owners whose non-wage income was exempted from income taxes in 2012; nor did it reverse any of the massive cuts in tax rates that were enacted that same year.

Democrats have argued the sales tax increase will mean that starting July 1, Kansas will have one of the highest tax rates on food purchases in the country. That’s because most other states either exempt food from their sales tax or tax it at a much lower rate than other items.

Rep. Barbara Ballard said it was the fight over taxes that made the session drag on for so long.

“We could easily solve this problem, easily solve it, if we would no longer give income tax breaks to 330,000 people,” Ballard said.

Republicans actually offered one tax plan that would have reimposed a minimal income tax of 2.7 percent on those business owners. It also would have lowered the sales tax on food to 5.7 percent.

That plan, known as the “Hutton plan” because it was offered by Wichita Republican Rep. Mark Hutton, received only 27 votes. All 28 Democrats in the Kansas House voted against it.

“If I was going to vote on any, it would have been that one because my big problem that I had was that 330,000 people weren’t paying anything and everybody else was,” Ballard said.

Some Republicans in the Legislature blasted Democrats for opposing that bill, and Brownback himself criticized Democrats for not offering any kind of plan of their own.

But Sen. Tom Holland of Baldwin City said Democrats, along with a group of about 17 moderate Republicans, would not accept anything less than a full repeal of the tax cuts enacted in 2012.

“There is a cadre of people in both the Senate and the House, myself included, who were like, if we can’t repeal the 2012 (tax cuts) where you get rid of that exemption on business income and basically reverse out those income tax rates, we’re not going to support anything. Because that’s how we got here,” Holland said.

The 2015 session was the first for Rep. Boog Highberger, a freshman House member elected in 2014 to succeed Paul Davis, who stepped down in an unsuccessful bid for governor.

“I recently heard an old Polish saying that sums it up pretty well,” Highberger said of his experience this year. “It’s not my circus; they’re not my monkeys.”

Highberger described the tax package as “the biggest tax increase in state history.”

“Unfortunately, it should have been two-and-a-half times higher,” he said

Highberger argued the budget and tax package are really about $100 million out of balance because the governor still has to cut $50 million out of the budget and because it’s doubtful that some of the minor tax provisions in the bill will actually produce the revenues that are expected.

Furthermore, he said, if one counts the roughly $400 million that was swept out of the highway fund and other state funds to shore up the budget, and the possibility that the Kansas Supreme Court will order a big increase in K-12 education funding, the amount needed to adequately fund the budget shortfall is closer to $1 billion.

Sen. Marci Francisco spoke briefly to the gathering before she had to leave for another event. She said one of her major objections to the tax bill was cutting the itemized deduction for property taxes paid in half.

“I don’t mind a lot of things,” she said. “I can even understand that we may want to have people pay taxes on their mortgage interest. But I cannot believe that you should have to add back half of your property tax payment and pay income tax on that. I don’t think there’s anyone who feels like the more property tax you pay in Kansas, the more income tax you pay.”

Many lawmakers will return to the Statehouse Friday, June 26, for the ceremonial “sine die” closing of the session. At that time, lawmakers will try to pass one more bill, fixing a technical error in the tax bill that imposes a property tax lid on cities and counties.